Friday Morning - Day 5

We were babysitting our 1 year old grandson last night. As those of you with children know, it is vital that you baby proof your house before turning them loose. They just seem to get into everything. As I was rapidly going down our hallway, Conner was crawling right behind me. He immediately spotted the door that was not fully latched and was off exploring and discovering. It just seems like little children are FILLED with curiosity and a desire to learn and explore.

That got me to thinking about my high school students. Why didn't I see that same desire in them? It's a battle sometimes just to keep them awake. Maybe their doors had been shut and locked so many times before that they have given up. Perhaps Squeak can be my key to unlocking some of those doors. My role as a mentor will be to find relevant problems and create meaningful projects. Just maybe I can reignite that spark of curiosity and the desire to explore. I hope so! Later>

Day 4

Whiz, bang, squizzle, beep, lub dub, lub dub. No, these aren't the sounds of the newest breakfast cereal, they are the squeaksters hard at work with LabPro. Great, the hands-on stuff. I'm in my element. Lots of tech and lots of ideas. The data collection features lend themselves quite well to the science classes. I could possibly use them along with a strain gauge to measure the forces involved with striking a nail. Squeak skills; lots of new features and many ways to use them. I do wish that I had copies of the examples shown during the day. I could use them as building blocks to explore and inovate. As it stands right now I don't have any of them working successfully and I'm not quite sure how to fix them. Oh well, just another opportunity to be creative. PBL focused on teams and team building. Good information and many points to check as I'm building my teams. Some of these points can make or break a project. If you don't have the right makeup of your teams it won't matter how dynamic and spectacular your project appears to be. If the kids don't have their "AHAHH" moments then the project will flop. With the wrong teams then it becomes an uphill battle. Time to get to the reading assignment. Later>

Hmmmmm, life as a Squeakster - day 3. I'm beginning to understand what it must be like to be a high school student. Play on the computer for a couple of hours then eat lunch. Come back, sit around and talk to your friends for a couple more hours then get on the bus and chill out. NOT!! How about discovering that maybe your original lesson plan project to use surveying was way too complicated for a first time project. Squeak doesn't lend itself well to working in 3 dimensions. Maybe it would be better to try something with adding dimensions like 23' 3" + 12' 8". I'm thinking of an inch worm creeping across a ruler or something like that. Well, first I need to go back and build my Rube Goldburg machine, that will be fun and I might just learn something new. Later>

Opportunities, opportunities, all these new tools. How do I use these tools to help my students grasp math concepts in a "hands-on" class? I am leaning towards using Squeak to highlight aspects of the surveying and site layout unit. Maybe a problem that has the students project layout points using Squeak then going out with the surveying equipment and confirming their answers or the other way around. Make preliminary measurements with the equipment then use the data to complete a Squeak exercise? The next step is creating some problems to see which way may fit the best. Opportunities, opportunities!

Day One

I tried creating new projects, saving projects and creating scripts. I learned today that squeak is similar to programming in other languages because you still follow basic program flow. But, it is different because it is more graphic interfaced. Finally, my one burning question is how to connect the students with this tool without overwhelming them or turning them off.